Introduction

Aortic dissection has an ominous prognosis if it is not promptly surgically corrected. Despite surgical intervention, patients suffer from high morbidity–mortality. Our aim was to compare the incidence of postoperative complications and 1-month and 6-month mortality of ascending aortic dissection surgical correction with paired matched controls for elective aortic aneurysm correction and urgent coronary artery bypass graft surgery (CABG).

Methods

Ascending aortic dissection (AAD) and aneurysm correction surgeries were gathered from February 2005 to June 2008, in a private community ICU. Demographic data, co-morbidities and cardiac ejection fraction were collected. Euroscore, Ontario and APACHE II scores were calculated to analyze patients' severity of illness. Surgical characteristics (elective or urgent indications) and peroperative data were also compared. AAD patients were compared against elective aortic aneurysms (ascending aorta controls) and all CABG (standard cardiac procedure control) surgeries. Besides, aortic dissection and aneurysm surgeries were compared with paired matched CABG control patients, according to age (± 3 years), gender, elective/urgent procedure and surgical team. At first, simple comparisons were made between ascending aorta and CABG surgeries. Aortic dissection and aneurysm groups were analyzed against each other; and finally AAD patients were compared with paired matched CABG brackets for morbidity (postoperative complications and ICU and hospital lengths of stay) and 1-month and 6-month mortality.

Conclusion

Although AAD surgical correction is associated with increased incidence of postoperative complications and hospital length of stay, 1-month and 6-month mortality is very similar to elective aortic aneurysm repair and paired matched CABG controls.